Kiri Callaghan's Blog, page 10

“Baking Olympics” Comic & Drawing Prompt# 3

If you follow my Instagram, you’ll see that I have decided to take on a weekly drawing challenge inspired by a book that was given to me filled with drawing prompts. This week’s drawing prompt was “Baking Olympics” and the following Lutalica Comic is the second in that series of 642.

Note: Lutalica is a word taken from John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. While “lutalica” is also a Croatian word for “wanderer”, Koenig’s dictionary really resonated with me, “The Part of Your Identity That Doesn’t Fit Into Categories”.

So thus this comic series was named, and I had a new favorite word.

 

ALSO Check out JP’s version of this drawing prompt, because it’s hilarious.

Have you done your own version of this drawing prompt? Leave a link in the comments!

Want to join in on our drawing prompts? Tomorrow starts a new week. Week #3’s prompt: Snow Golem.

 

 

“A Magical Golden Bag” Comic & Drawing Prompt #2

So if you follow my Instagram, you’ll see that I have decided to take on a weekly drawing challenge inspired by a book that was given to me filled with drawing prompts. The first drawing prompt was “A Magical Golden Bag” and the following comic (series name TBD) is the first in that series of 642 (meep!).

Care to join me? Link your own below! Mind you, you don’t HAVE to do a comic like me, I just prefer that to just drawing something on its own.

Next week’s writing prompt (starting Saturday) will be “Baking Olympics”.

Also be sure to watch my latest “Miss You, Talk Soon“, featuring Sydney Blake and her amazing song “Supernova”!

“Relationship Issues”

If Dragon Age has taught me anything, it’s a dangerous business dating a mage. Just ask my male Warden, Warrior Hawke and Dalish Inquisitor….

Alys – Question 8

Curious about a character? Check out here for a list of questions!

8) What do they look for in a platonic or romantic partner?

Everyone handles trauma differently, but I think there is a sort of caution in the way most abuse survivors approach companionship. Alys is suspicious by nurture, not nature. New people in the house meant a new danger. She bought locks for her door, she learned how to hide and not draw attention to herself. It’s the life of a cornered animal, waiting for the next predator to strike. So when looking for a companion of any sort, she waits for them to show their vulnerability first. Charlie had similar scars. Oswin showed her the watch.

Alys is first and foremost independent both out of necessity and because it simply makes things easier. She picks her friends carefully and once she does, she holds on for dear life. While she is protective of those she loves, she’s drawn to equally independent spirits, where she won’t feel mired down, but also can keep up with her ambition to escape the present.

Obviously there is a difference in who Alys is before she enters Terra Mirum and after she leaves it for the first time. She’s a bit more willing to leave her baggage behind and not let it rule her. That’s part of her whole talk with Charlie.

I’m getting muddled in this explanation, I’m sure, but for Alys, this is a particularly complicated conversation.

Alys saved Terra Mirum. She faced her greatest nightmares. By Changeling (Book 2) she has rebuilt a life for herself. She’s not just independent, she’s driven and determined, and marked for ingenuity. These qualities are paramount in a partner she chooses to spend the majority of her time with. Her partner must be able to exist without her, and rather has chosen to exist beside her. There is no room for co-dependence. Humor, obviously, or they’d be fighting constantly, and in a somewhat ironic sense, someone willing to fight with her. Alys knows she’s become a steamroller over the years, and you need someone who will stand up for themselves if you’re a steamroller. Otherwise they get flattened. If someone is too polite to say they’re not okay with something, it’s never going to work. They’ll never be able to make any decisions together.

Character questions

I found this on Tumblr about DnD characters. Instead I’m posing this to you. You can have any number of questions answered about ANY character I have written.

nomercypercy:

1) What is their full name, and does it have any special relevance? Alternatively, what nicknames do they have?

2) What hobby would they like to be good at?

3) If they played dnd what race and class would they pick?

4) If they could go back in time and change one thing, what would they change?

5) What is their favourite weapon to wield?

6) If you could behove them one magical item, what would you give them?

7) If they didn’t have to adventure, would they stop?

8) What do they look for in a platonic or romantic partner?

9) Do they trust easily?

10) What is their favourite colour?

11) Diplomatic or aggressive?

12) They get arrested, and thrown in jail, how do they escape?

13) Would they leave their party for any reason?

14) If they could own any creature as a pet, what would they have?

15) How have you influenced your characters personality?

16) Do they have any tattoos? If so what? If not, do you think they would get one in the future?

17) Where would they like to be in ten years time?

18) What do they look like? Either description or picture.

19) What genre of music would they be into?

20) What would be the worst thing someone could say to them?

Alys Alert!

The second-edition printing of Alys, to be published through Doce Blant, is set to release in August. The poor editors are backed up so things are bit more delayed than planned. I’ll be posting more info as it comes here and to my Patreon as we get closer to go-time.

Upcoming Music Requests

Hello my loves,

As you know we’re going to be doing a live stream this weekend, and one of the donation tiers is a song request that will be recorded and put on my YouTube.

I figured there should probably be a place where I list that so people don’t request the same song.

So here is the list so far:

A Thousand Years – Christina Perri Cover

Try – P!nk Cover

The Doctor’s Lament – Rerecording of previous song

The Steward of Gondor – Rerecording of previous song

I Dreamed a Dream (of Firefly) – Rerecording of previous song

My Immortal – Evanescence Cover

Hate Is Not Welcome In My Home

It’s been an interesting past few days on social media since the Orlando shooting. I’ve seen people defending the civilian right to semi-automatic weapons over the safety of human lives, and I’ve seen the identities of bigots protected and blurred as news articles report on people applauding the shooter for his chosen targets.


Thankfully, I have also seen great love. People holding vigils, banding together, donating blood. And it light of both this dichotomy, I felt I need to make something very clear about who I am and the community I am fostering as an artist.


For the past few years I’ve been in a monogamous loving relationship with a cis-het man. Because of this, I’m often mistaken for being straight/heterosexual.


 


I’m not. I’m pan. What this means is my romantic attraction to a partner is not gender related or specific. My partners have identified as male, female, queer and trans.


 


I call The Doctor my “partner” or my “companion” rather than “my boyfriend” for multiple reasons, but this is one of them. It helps me feel that even though on the outside I appear heteronormative, I retain my actual identity.


 


If I was straight, my community would still be a safe space for my LGBTQA family, and homophobia or transphobia of any kind would not be tolerated.


But I feel it’s important to let you know this is my tribe. My family. And the vitriol you spew at them is aimed at me as well. This will probably make me enemies rather than change someone’s mind, but it needed to be said. We’re building a safe community, a community founded on open minds and curiosity. This community is my home, and hate of any kind is not welcome here.

Live Stream, Q&A, Music, Raffle & More!

Hello you beautiful Curiosities, we’ve got some crazy live content coming your way! Why? Well one, because I haven’t been able to do much livestreaming lately. And two, we’re still trying to negotiate with the mortgage company to bring down our monthly payment (the monthly escrow is so unreasonably high so we’re still looking at a nearly $3k payment) and, we had a renter who would have been taking two of the rooms (thus giving us no worries about July’s payment) back out at the last minute.

So more or less, I’m a little worried because things aren’t going quite so smoothly as we’d hoped and prayed. Trying to keep my chin up though because we have NOT come this far to fall now.

So I’m going to be doing some videos and livestreams to help raise a little extra to help us get through July, and I have some donation tiers that I hope you’ll find interesting. If you can help, awesome, if you can’t, I hope you enjoy the show anyway. =)

Livestream Dates:

Friday June 24th, 7pm – 3am PST

Saturday June 25th TBD (May include Harry Potter Night Live Footage)

Sunday June 26th, 10am – 10pm PST

Where will the Livestreams be?

On my Twitch channel.

What will the Livestreams include?

Q&As, Gaming, Raffles and music!

What’s up for raffle?

A variety of donated prizes that we’ll be raffling off individually!

PayDay2 (with all DLC) on Steam

1 ECCC Exclusive Funko Pop Snoopy

1 special raffle Big Ticket Item (TBA after E3)

(This list is still incomplete, so please continue to check back)

The Raffle, How To Enter:

1 Raffle Entry: (Free) Simply post one question you’d like me to answer on livestream in the comments below.

Additional Entries by Donation:

$5 – 1 additional general raffle entry and question.

$15 – 1 hour of gameplay of the game of your choice (Listed below), + 3 additional questions & general raffle entries

$25 – 1 karaoke song* of your choice (We’ll work together to find one in range), + 5 additional questions & general raffle entries, and an mp3 of all my current songs (including Saving April songs).

$100 – 1 hour 1 on 1. Need a voice lesson or just sing karaoke together? Want to talk writing or need some advice? Maybe you just wanna play a game together on a livestream. +20 additional questions & general raffle entries, and an mp3 of all my current songs (including Saving April songs AND other requested karaoke songs)

$200 – 1 video** (Kiriosity, Nailed It, Tutorial, Let’s Play, Review etc) on the subject of your choice (nothing explicit) + special raffle entry for a big ticket item (TBA after E3) and an mp3 of all my current songs (including Saving April songs AND other requested karaoke songs)

In regards to tiers, we’re going to stick to Kickstarter rules, so if you donated $25, but want to pick a tier below it instead, just indicate it in the paypal comments. (Ex. I’d like this to go towards 1.75 hours of Dragon Age: Inquisition gameplay instead of picking a song.)

Additionally, if you have a suggested tier, let me know!

Click Here To Make a Donation!

Note: Please remember to fill in what you’d like in the comments, along with the best email to contact you. 

*Songs will be delivered as received and as we decide on what to sing. This will be also dependent on They will be uploaded to YouTube prior to the live stream (time permitting) and I’ll send you a copy of the MP3. Obviously anything requested DURING the livstream will be uploaded afterwards.

**Videos, due to their time consuming nature of research, scripting and filming (especially in regards to Kiriosities) will be uploaded as I finish them after the livestream.

Livestream will also include a donation counter that I will update as we go so we can track our progress!

Available Games For Livestream:

The 7th Guest

Alice: Madness Returns

Baulder’s Gate: Enhanced Edition

Baulder’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition

Breath of Death VII

Broken Age

Child of Light

Costume Quest 2

CSI: Hard Evidence

Cthulhu Saves The World

Dishonored

Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age: Awakenings

Dragon Age 2

Dragon Age: Inquisition

Drawn: Dark Flight

Dreamfall Chapters

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

DuckTales Remastered

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

Fallout: New Vegas

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

Foul Play

Game of Thrones – A Telltale Game Series

Guns of Icarus Online

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

King’s Quest Collection

Life is Strange

Little Big Planet 3 (PS4)

Mass Effect

Mass Effect 2

Murdered: Soul Suspect

Never Alone

Nidhogg

Ori and the Blind Forest

Overwatch (Ps4)

Oxenfree

Papers, Please

Payday 2 (1 Hour)

Portal

Portal 2

Post Mortem

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Starbound

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

The Secret World

Still Life

Still Life 2

Table Top Simulator (Cards, checkers, etc) – Not great for streaming

Tales from the Borderlands

Terraria

Until Dawn (PS4)

Violett: Remastered Edition

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

The Witcher 2: Assassin’s of Kings Enhanced Edition

The Wolf Among Us

 

Pinteresting Under the Influence

Pinterest is a dangerous place for me. It gives me grandiose ideas and delusions of what I can magically accomplish, from make-up to baking, crafting to decorating. And thus I looked up multiple cake pop recipes and tried to glean what I could from their similarities.

First you’re going to start with a basic cake mix. Now you can make your cake from scratch if you want to go all the way down that road, but honestly a good box mix is just fine. You’re going to be destroying it once it’s baked anyway. Also, since I was attempting something new, I didn’t want to waste a bunch of time and money on something that could have possible failed miserably.

For this I used Duncan Hines Pink Velvet with Buttery Vanilla flavor. In my experience this mix tends to be a bit more rich than most box mixes.

Pour into a glass dish and bake as normal! Remember it doesn’t have to be pretty, just cook evenly.

 

 

Now for the fun part! After your cake has cooled you get to destroy it! Some people put their cake into a food processor, but I prefer to get my hands dirty (after thoroughly washing them, of course!). Crunch it all up into crumbs in a bowl! Then you’re going to add your icing of choice in slow increments. Squidge it in with your fingers until you get a nice smooth Play-Doh-like consistency.

You’ll want to test this by rolling smaller pieces into balls. If they fall apart easy, then you need to add in more icing. Once you have the desired consistency, wrap it up in saran wrap and put it in the fridge to sit overnight. Or, if you’re me, I left it until I got back from work the next day, so approximately 24hrs.

 The best part about this for me is I don’t have to make all of the cake pops at once.

Now once your dough is ready, you have to melt your coating. Some people use Wilton’s and if you do you will want to be SUPER careful because if you heat them too quickly, the entire consistency changes.

They tell you to use a double boiler, but what I did is use a large glass bowl on top of a pot of water. Don’t bring the water to a bowl, keep it on a very low simmer. This is a slow process but it will be worth it. Pour a small amount of veggie oil (and I mean SMALL) in the bowl and then empty your candy melts. Personally, I used white-chocolate wafer melts from Ghirardelli.

Once you have a liquid consistency, you can start actually making the cake pops themselves. Roll a piece of dough into a ball.

Make sure you don’t have any deep cracks that might compromise the structural integrity. Then dip your lollipop stick (I got a bag at Michael’s Craft store) into the melted chocolate/candy melt. Wait a few seconds and then pierce the cake ball about midway through. This should create an anchor to the stick. Set it aside, make another ball, rinse and repeat etc.

After you have made quite a few of these little guys, the first ones you made SHOULD have hardened around the base.

Now you’re going to carefully dip it into the rest of your melty chocolate mixture!

 Careful of any drips! Now with it still wet, apply any sprinkles or edible glitter that you are planning on using to decorate your cake pop. Stick them in some Styrofoam and let them dry standing straight up. If you want to flash-dry them, you can pop them in the freezer.

Shortly after, voila, you’re going to have a tasty treat, all thanks to late-night Pinteresting.